Marina Wendtorf outside Kiel

After our journey from Skanör towards the Kiel channel, we decided to go to the first harbour we could find - that was Marina Wendtorf. It was quite expensive, and I think it lacked some ... charm. As a place to leave the boat while going to Kiel it probably works out - though, it's quite a distance from Kiel and I don't know how to get there by public transport.

Here is the harbour office house.

They do have several places with grills, benches, games, art installations, historical monuments, etc ... it should all help to make it gemütlich, but it's still my opinion that this place is missing some charm.

I found this a bit funny, someone has "lost" a forklift here.

Another thing that should help on the atmosphere is the fact that there is a protected area nearby, entrance allowed only for the birds and wildlife. It didn't smell much good though, and from most boats there is very little view to this area. We were outermost and had the best view, here it is ...

There are also beaches to the north and south of the harbour.

The border between the harbour and the protected area is marked with a thin floating tube, also preventing oil spills from entering the protected area. Sea birds love to stand on the top of this line. I'm not sure what the thick tube behind is for.

The harbour area also has a fishery harbour ...

... and museum harbour ...

... and anchorage ...

Here is the protected area with birds

And here is the beach at the other side

There seems to be a flood barrier here. The sea rarely causes much flooding except for in areas where big rivers meet the sea ... but a couple of metres above normal high water can happen sometimes. Perhaps the flood barriers are needed because the hinterland is quite flat.

A couple of kilometres (including detours; there are no straight roads going there from the marina) away there is a supermarket, and outside the super market there is a very good public playground - and grilling place as well. Very nice indeed.

My eldest son asked me ... why are the German roofs often so sharp and high? Like the houses at this photo - it seems like the height from the bottom of the roof to the top of the roof is like 2/3 of the building. I have no, answer to this ... except a loose hypothesis, with brick houses it's cheaper to build roofs than walls?

Then there are those weird houses right by the harbour, with much flatter roofs. Why do they need such an insane amount of ventilation channels from the roofs?

Some of the roofs even seem to be upside-down

We also visited the neighbour harbour at Laboe

Here is a random nice house seen at Laboe

While Wendtorf seems to be nothing else than a harbour, Laboe is a town on it's own, short way to the supermarket, and many other shops and serving places.

We also visited the Holtenau harbour. We found the place very nice, with the museum ships at Tissenkai, restaurants and playgrounds, and dhingy-distance to Kiel. Harbour fee was really cheap compared to Wendtorf. The harbour itself was less comfortable though, more swell, the harbour didn't really seem to be designed for pleasure crafts, no electricity and no water, etc. Unfortunately I didn't take any good photos at Holtenau; the few I took will eventually be included in a post on the Kiel channel.

I'm unfortunately lagging behind on posts, we're already on the way from Cuxhaven to Amsterdam now.

Selected photos available in original quality on IPFS QmcP2UtQbhRTD5kz29ShNVuWqF4WkNachq6KwubkjT2KVA. All photos taken available in original quality on IPFS Qmeb9VDHaCx4gX8YB63GLLt4eha3Zbhr9gVaGR5m5X9iwi. License: CC BY-SA 4.0